The Rumour

by Lesley Kara

  I close my eyes and let that sink in. So it was me telling them about it at book club that started this whole thing.

  Michael takes hold of my hand again and massages my palm with his thumb. ‘She thought her mum was done with all that fighting-for-justice stuff and that she’d finally turned a corner. She thought Marie just wanted to come and stay with her because she had cancer and needed looking after. But of course Marie used to go with her sometimes to pick Hayley up from school. That’s when she must have recognized your mum.’

  ‘But how did you and Karen know where to find us?’

  ‘We were racking our brains trying to work that out. Then Karen mentioned how her mum always seemed drawn to that derelict house on the seafront. Every time they walked past she told Karen it stirred up bad memories. It all just clicked into place. How it was a derelict house where Robbie got killed. We drove there as fast as we could.’

  ‘Where was Hayley in all this?’

  ‘Karen’s husband came to the hospital to take over. Karen had already phoned him before she left and asked him to meet them there when he finished at work. Karen didn’t tell him much, just said her mother was poorly and she needed to get back.’

  ‘She’ll have told him now, though, won’t she? It’ll be all over Flinstead in a few days.’ My eyes are wet with tears. ‘Seems like Marie got her way after all. We’ll all have to move now. Mum won’t be safe. None of us will.’

  Michael bites down on his lower lip and looks at his lap.

  ‘The thing is,’ he says, meeting my eyes at last, ‘your mum’s already gone.’

  ‘What? What do you mean, gone?’

  ‘They’ve taken her to a safe house while they decide what to do.’

  ‘Where? Where have they taken her?’

  He does a sad little smile. ‘Think about it, Joey. It wouldn’t be very safe if they told us that.’

  ‘Will I be able to see her?’

  He looks down at his lap again. ‘I don’t know. Brian said they’ll try to find a way, but I don’t know how long it will take.’

  Before I have a chance to fully register the implications of what Michael has just told me I hear a familiar little voice chattering away in the corridor.

  ‘If she’s not awake yet, Long-neckie Boy’s going to tickle her ear with his nose until she is.’

  ‘Poor Mummy might not want to be tickled.’ It’s Kay. Lovely, kind Kay, who’s been looking after him all this time.

  And here he is. My beautiful little boy. My darling Alfie. If only I could sit up and take him in my arms.

  He runs towards the bed, but Michael catches him just in time, before he clambers on top of me. He holds him up so he can give me a kiss without hurting me. Not that that would matter. A kiss from Alfie is worth all the pain in the world.

  ‘Why are you crying, Mummy? Does it hurt?’

  ‘I’m crying because I’m so happy to see you, darling, but yes, it does hurt a bit.’

  ‘Long-neckie Boy wants to kiss you better too,’ he says, and he lifts the soft giraffe and touches its head gently on my dressing.

  ‘Where did this come from?’ I ask him.

  Kay clears her throat. ‘It was meant to be a present for my grandson, but … but Gillian sent it back. It’s a long story, Jo. We had a terrible argument once. I said things about her life I shouldn’t have. I’ve begged her to forgive me but, so far …’ She shakes her head sadly and lowers her voice. ‘I shouldn’t have lied about the Skyping, but I was ashamed to tell you the truth. I didn’t want you to think I was some horrible woman who’d alienated her own daughter.’

  ‘Oh, Kay, I would never have thought that.’

  ‘I know. It was just my silly pride.’

  She squeezes my hand and leans in to kiss me on the cheek. ‘But what about you! Promise me you won’t take up jogging ever again. I couldn’t believe it when Michael told me what happened. The pavements round here are treacherous even when it’s not raining. If you want to keep fit, you should try the Zumba class I go to. Much safer, and a whole lot more fun than jogging.’

  Michael winks at me from over her shoulder.

  I smile. ‘You’re on. But give me a while to get better first, eh?’

  54

  Two weeks later

  It’s a typical family scene on a cold November Saturday. Alfie playing with his Lego on the living-room floor, lost in an imaginative world of his own. Michael on one end of the sofa and me on the other, my arm in a sling and supported by cushions. We’re watching back-to-back episodes of NCIS.

  The warmth of the central heating is making me sleepy. Michael hooks his ankle around mine absent-mindedly and I allow myself to close my eyes and drift off briefly. I haven’t been sleeping well for the last fortnight – hardly surprising in the circumstances – so lazy afternoons like this allow me to catch up.

  We said goodbye to her yesterday. Michael, Alfie and me. It was all very clandestine. We drove to a garage on the outskirts of Cambridge where we met Brian (probably not his real name – he looked more like a James or an Anthony to me), and then we were driven to a country park where Mum was waiting for us at a picnic bench. My heart lurched when I saw her, sitting there all alone. She looked old all of a sudden. Old and sad and defeated. But then, when she turned to face us, all I could see was a frightened little girl. The one who used to cower in her room waiting for her dad to come upstairs and torment her.

  Alfie sobbed when she told him she was moving away but, actually, I think he’s taken it pretty well. She knew exactly what to say to him. She told him that someone had been very mean to her so she was moving somewhere else to make new friends. He understood that, just as she knew he would. He could relate to it because that’s sort of what happened to him too. She also told him that, one day, when she was settled in her new house, he could come and see her.

  We all could, she said, switching her gaze from Alfie to me and lowering her voice. If we wanted to. Tears well up as I think of her face. The sadness in her eyes.

  I know that, in time, Alfie will adjust to not having his grandma round the corner. Having Michael move in full time has helped, of course. Michael and Sol, who’s flat out under the radiator at the moment.

  Whether I will adjust is another matter.

  ‘I still don’t see why they had to move her,’ I say, when Alfie goes upstairs to fetch some of his action figures. ‘There’s no video and Marie is dead. Surely she could have stayed in Flinstead. She loved it here.’

  Michael sighs. We’ve been over this so many times he must be fed up with it by now, but somehow he still has the patience to go through it all again.

  ‘It’s too big a risk. We don’t know who else Marie might have told. Just because she didn’t tell Karen doesn’t mean she didn’t mention it to someone else. And Karen knows now, doesn’t she? I know she’s sworn never to go public, but how do we know she won’t change her mind at some point in the future? And can you honestly believe she won’t tell her own husband? I know she’s promised she won’t, but he’s her husband. Why wouldn’t she confide in him?’

  He gives me a sidelong glance. ‘Maybe she already has.’

  I know what he’s thinking – that if word gets out, maybe we’ll have to move too. Either that or ride out the storm. Put up with people whispering behind our backs, reporters trying to doorstep us. What a story that would be: devastated daughter discovers her mother is notorious child killer Sally McGowan.

  I pick up the letter Karen has sent me, the one that arrived a few days after I came home from hospital, the one I’ve been reading and re-reading ever since. This time I just stare at the envelope.

  ‘Karen’s spent her whole life in the shadow of her uncle’s death. She’s seen first hand what it did to her grandmother and her mother and she wants it to end. She doesn’t want Hayley to grow up knowing what her grandmother did, using an innocent child as a pawn to get revenge. She says if she’d known Marie had recognized Mum, she might have been able to talk her round, but Ma
rie knew Karen’s feelings on the matter so she kept it to herself. You’ve read this letter. You know all this. She’s not like her mother. She understands that Mum was as much a victim in all this as Robbie was.’

  ‘The trouble is, some people will never be persuaded of that,’ Michael says. ‘It doesn’t matter to them that Robbie ran into the blade. In their eyes, she was a bully with a knife in her hands and that makes her guilty.’

  ‘Is that what you think too?’

  He shakes his head. ‘No. She was a bully because that’s all she’d ever known. She might have hated what her dad did to her and her mum but, somewhere deep down, she’d have loved him too. Because he was her dad and he won’t have been vicious every single minute of every day. He’d have been nice to her too, sometimes. And to her mum. That’s how these abusers get away with it for so long.’

  He shuffles nearer and kisses me. I don’t know what I would have done without Michael looking after me and Alfie these last couple of weeks. There are so many emotions swirling around in my head. Most of the time, I just sit on the sofa and stare at the TV. The worst part is how I keep reliving it, over and over again. Not just the shock of finding out about Mum and who she is – who she was – but the horror of what came next, how terrified I was that Alfie was in danger.

  We spoke on the phone yesterday, Karen and I.

  ‘Your secret’s safe with me, Jo,’ she said. ‘This has gone on long enough. It needs to end now. With us. Mum and Nan destroyed their lives seeking revenge. I’m not going to let the same thing happen to me and Hayley.’

  I told her how sorry I was for what happened to her mum, how I felt responsible, but she told me I shouldn’t. She said it was better than the kind of death she might have had. Being in pain for months on end as the cancer took over.

  The awful thing is, I feel like I’ve lost my mum too, for although we’ll be able to write and speak on the phone, Skype or FaceTime each other maybe, it won’t be the same. And as for seeing her again, there’s a strong possibility she’ll be sent abroad this time. Somewhere far, far away. It’s not going to be easy.

  The phone rings and Michael leaps up and takes it in the other room. He’s so fiercely protective of me at the moment I feel like I’m in a bubble, sealed off from the real world and its intrusions. It won’t last for ever. Sooner or later I’m going to have to pick up the pieces and get back to some semblance of normality. We all are. Our new normal.

  Five minutes later, he’s back. ‘That was Dave. He and Carol send their love and hope the pain is easing off. He said to take as long as you need.’

  He sits back down on the sofa. ‘He also said to tell you that Susan Marchant has changed her mind about selling her house. Apparently, her neighbour’s husband is an accountant and when they found out she was donating the proceeds to charity he had a chat with her and, basically, she’s found out she can just donate the house without having to go through the rigmarole of selling it, save herself the agency fees and gain a large tax credit to boot. Dave sounded well pissed off.’

  Oops. So Maddie must have picked up on what I said about Susan not wanting the money and talked to her about it. Oh well, the poor woman deserves all the luck she can get after what she went through as a child. And if Maddie’s right and Anne Wilson really did put those pictures on Sonia Martins’ shop window, there’s a kind of justice there too.

  I snuggle up to Michael. Well, as much as I can snuggle with this bloody sling on. ‘Michael, there’s one thing I haven’t asked you yet.’

  ‘I know, and it’s about time too.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Oh, sorry.’ He grins. ‘I assumed you were going to propose.’

  ‘No, you idiot! I was going to say, I don’t suppose you’ll be writing that book now.’

  He laughs. ‘Probably not, all things considered.’ He kisses me on the lips. ‘Some stories are best left untold, don’t you think?’

  A different sea this time. A warmer sea. An ocean, if we’re being precise. The waves are larger here, large enough to ride on a surfboard. I watch them sometimes, the surfing crowd, waiting to catch the waves at just the right point, riding on top of the breaking curl, knees bent, arms outstretched for balance.

  Such grace and beauty.

  Such courage and strength.

  Sometimes I walk to one of the quieter bays to sit and read, to swim when I need to cool down. The sand is white and soft and hot on the soles of my feet. My size-six feet with their long, slender toes and their neatly filed nails which, just recently, I’ve taken to painting in pastel colours. Pinks and mauves and baby blues.

  There is safety in numbers here. The transient crowd of tourists. The surfing dudes and dudettes. The ever-changing bar-workers and waiting staff. Nobody takes much notice of the pale-skinned older woman with pretty toes, the one with the large floppy sun-hat and shades, her nose in a book.

  I like to choose my spot with care. Not too near the water’s edge but far enough away from the cafés that line the beach so that I’m not bothered by the noise or the smell of barbecued meat. I like to sit near young families if I can, ones with little boys who look a bit like Alfie. Near enough to watch them dig holes in the sand. Near enough to catch their beach balls if the breeze blows them my way and to toss them back in return for one of their shy little-boy smiles.

  She says they’ll come and visit soon, she and Alfie, and though I crave the sight and sound and touch of them, sometimes I wonder whether it might be too much. Too much for all of us. I wonder whether it might be better to leave things as they are and just communicate by email. Nice and anonymous. Nice and safe. Because if I see them again, if I hold them, I’ll never want to let them go, and I must. I must. There’s no way they’ll settle over here and I can’t go back. I can never go back. Not now.

  I’m the hunted. I’ll always be the hunted. This is the price I pay for my past. That one fateful, fatal second I’d undo in a heartbeat if I could.

  I close my eyes against the sun and I’m back there all over again. That cold, dark kitchen. The spores of mould on the wall. The filthy rag rug on the floor. Just me and Robbie Harris. All the others had gone. All the others had run away like they were supposed to, run away screaming. They were waiting for me to come after them. Expecting me to.

  But Robbie kept on whining. ‘Let me be the baddy. Let me have the knife.’ And then he grabbed at it and cut his fingers and started screaming. I just wanted him to stop. I just wanted him to shut up and stand still for a minute so I could see how deep the cut was. I knew what to do when someone was bleeding. I knew you had to wrap the wound up tight. I was going to take my cardigan off and use that. But he wouldn’t shut up. He wouldn’t stand still.

  The rage engulfed me like a fire. A fire blazing in my brain.

  So I let him have it. The knife. I let him have it.

  Acknowledgements

  There are many people who have helped me on my journey to publication and I want to thank them all.

  My husband, Rashid Kara, for understanding my need to write and always believing in me and supporting me; my writing group (Deborah Klée, Paula Guyver, Anita Belli, Gerald Hornsby, Catherine Rendall and Janine Swann), for their razor-sharp critiquing skills and supportive friendship; my Faber Academy tutors, Maggie Gee and Richard Skinner, and my fellow students (especially Peter Howard, Susan de Villiers, Hannah Cox, Richard O’Halloran, Brandon Cheevers and Hanife Melbourne), for their encouragement and feedback on ‘the novels that came before’; my agent, Amanda Preston, for her wisdom, energy and creative insight; my editors, Sarah Adams and Natasha Barsby, and the rest of the hugely talented Transworld team, for their enthusiasm and championing of The Rumour.

  If you loved

  THE RUMOUR

  don’t miss Lesley Kara’s gripping new thriller,

  WHO DID YOU TELL?

  Read on for an early look at the first chapters now!

  Just because you imagine yourself doing something and enjoy the way i
t makes you feel, it doesn’t mean you actually want to do it. It doesn’t mean you’re going to do it. Of course not. The sub-conscious can be a very murky place. Take sexual fantasies, for instance. I’ve got myself off on some seriously dodgy stuff in my time, but in real life, I’m strictly vanilla-flavoured.

  So if, in my head, I’m grabbing a handful of her braids and slamming her head into a brick wall till her skull’s smashed in, it doesn’t mean that’s what I’ll do. It doesn’t make me a bad person just thinking about it. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s normal to have the odd violent fantasy about someone you hate so much, where every muscle in your body contracts when you think of them. I mean, everybody does it sometimes, don’t they? Don’t they?

  Seven slams, if you’re interested. That’s how many it takes till her braids run red.

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  I don’t believe in ghosts. Never have. But my dead boyfriend has just passed me on the street. I smelled him first, or rather the aftershave he used to wear. Joint by Roccobarocco. A nineties vintage scent – masculine and woody. A discontinued line. As is Simon – or so I thought.

  I spin round, but no one’s there. Only a girl in a puffa jacket squatting to tie her laces. Then I see him, sprinting towards the sea, the furry flaps of his trapper hat flying in the breeze like a spaniel’s ears.

  My knees give way. I stare after him, but he’s disappeared into the night. That’s if he was ever there in the first place. Maybe it’s all in my head. A hallucination. I’ve had a few of those in the past.

  Whatever it was, I scurry home. A small, frightened creature, suddenly afraid of the dark.

  Mum pounces on me like a sniffer dog the second I walk through the door.

  ‘Where’ve you been? I’ve been worried sick.’ Her fingers dig into my arms and I have to shake her off.